“SA has one of the most unequal societies in the world. The Gini coefficient declined only slightly between 2006 and 2011, from 0.72 to 0.69; change has been slow indeed.

“The emergence of the middle 60% of the population contributed to these improvements, while the poorest 20% of the population saw a decline in the share of national income.

“Nevertheless, poverty levels are slowly declining. Between 2006 and 2011, the proportion of the population living in poverty (using the national upper bound poverty line) fell from 57.2% to 45.5%. We believe that this could be attributed partly to the aggressive expansion in the social grants programmes.”